Ukraine: Yanukovych used paid killers with Russian help

Apr. 3, 2014
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Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov speaks during a joint news conference with General Prosecutor Sergey Magnitsky and the Head of the Ukrainian Security Service Vlentyn Nalyvaychenko (both not pictured) in Kiev, Ukraine, on Thursday. / Sergey Dolzhenko, epa

by Olga Rudenko, Special for USA TODAY

by Olga Rudenko, Special for USA TODAY

KIEV, Ukraine - The Ukraine government on Thursday accused ousted President Viktor Yanukovych of using hired killers and kidnappers to terrorize his political opponents with direction from Moscow, as Russia demanded to know what NATO is up to in east Ukraine.

Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky said the evidence also showed that Russia's security service, known as the FSB, helped Yanukovych's attempts to crush anti-government protests that were attacked in February by forces that shot and killed more than 80 people.

"We know that 26 FSB employees were present at one of the shooting ranges of the Ukraine security services in December 2013," Ukraine security services chief Valentyn Nalivaychenko said.

He said Yanukovych's own former security service chief visited the Russians and "actually reported to them." "We can presume that these groups participated in organizing the anti-terrorist organization."

The FSB, or the Russian Federal Security Services, is the successor to the secret police agency the KGB, which undermined political opponents at home and abroad during the days of the Communist Soviet Union. The KGB also ran spy networks worldwide, and is where Russian President Vladimir Putin spent much of his career before the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991.

Following the February attacks on protesters, Ukraine's elected parliament voted to oust Yanukovych from power. Members of Yanukovych's own party backed the vote. The former president fled to Russia, which gave him safe haven.

Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov says authorities in Kiev have detained 12 members of a riot police unit on suspicion of shooting protesters. Ukraine says Yanukovych ordered the snipers to go after protesters; Yanukovych denied the charge in an interview with the Associated Press.

"We examined one of the machine guns we found, and found that eight people were killed from this gun only," Avakov said at the news conference, referring to a weapon he said was used by a sniper acting for Yanukovych.

"So-called anti-terrorist operations that the former head of the security services, Oleksandr Yakymenko, launched on Feb. 18 was actually a cover for mass murders," he said.

"He gave (police) an order to use guns," Nalivaychenko said at the news conference.

"That anti-terrorist operation that actually was a mass murder was directly coordinated by former president Yanukovych," said Nalivaychenko.

Both Yakymenko and Zakharchenko fled Ukraine in late February at the same time as the former president. Ukraine has issued an arrest warrant for Yanukovych.

Some analysts said it is unclear to what extent Yanukovych was involved.

"The point is how much Yanukovych knew about what was going on," said Sophia Pugsley, program coordinator at the European Council of Foreign Relations in London. "He may or may not have known but I think that he has enough involvement and influence to have blood on his hands."

Russia said on Thursday it wanted answers from NATO on its activities in eastern Europe after the Western military alliance promised to beef up defenses for its eastern members, Reuters reported.

Russia's takeover of Ukraine's Crimea province last month has led to what European leaders say is the most serious crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.

Worried about Russian troop movements on the Ukraine border, NATO, the U.S.-European military alliance, is coming up with measures to reassure Eastern European countries that the same will not happen to them. Poland has asked for more NATO troops, and others are considering such requests.

Much of Eastern Europe including all of East Germany were under domination from the Soviet Union for decades after World War II.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any increase in NATO's permanent presence in eastern Europe would violate a 1997 treaty on NATO-Russian cooperation. He did not mention that Russia's invasion of Ukraine violated a treaty it signed with Kiev and the United States and United Kingdom in 1994, says NATO.

"We have addressed questions to the north Atlantic military alliance. We are not only expecting answers, but answers that will be based fully on respect for the rules we agreed on," Lavrov told reporters at a briefing with his Kazakh counterpart.

Russian recalled its ambassador to NATO for consultations Thursday, two days after NATO member countries suspended cooperation with Russia over the Ukraine crisis, Russian state media reported.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Thursday it had lodged a formal complaint about a German minister's statement comparing Russia's annexation of Crimea with Adolf Hitler's policies.

The ministry said that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's comparison of last month's incorporation of Crimea into Russia to Hitler's 1938 takeover of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia represented a "rude juggling of historic events and facts."